One of the largest determinants of a business’ success is whether or not its staff are able to perform effectively as a team. Barriers to entry in most industries are dropping. Competition is increasing, and therefore encouraging creativity in the office is vital as it improves productivity and stimulates innovation.

The key to spurring on this creativity is through the collaboration platform you design for your team. Providing them with a functional hub from which they can communicate is essential in modern business as it enables employees to work both faster and smarter. Collaborating also makes staff more responsible, which in turn increases motivation levels. This is even more important when teams work virtually.

Cisco’s portfolio was, and is, renowned as the gold-standard in the collaboration market for many years. Their focus on functionality, security, design, and support has been heavily favoured by countless of the worlds largest firms. Cisco may be better known for their hardware products but over the last few years, it is their software and applications that have been gaining the most traction.

One such platform is Webex Teams (formally Cisco Spark). Webex Teams is highly developed and polished instant messaging client that does so much more. This article will cover five of the best features of Webex Teams that we think you’ll love.

The Cisco Webex Board is a modern presentation board that brings collaboration to the next level. The sleekly designed board is perfect for any office where teamwork is important. What’s great is Webex Teams is seamlessly integrated with the boards to provide a smooth and ultra-efficient experience.

When using your Webex teams app, you can walk into any room where a Webex Board is located and the devices will instantly connect and the board will greet you by name. From here you have the option to switch whatever you’re working on, or the call you are engaged in, over to the board and continue your meeting from there without interruption. If you need to leave a meeting room at any point you can swap back to your phone and continue your meeting on the go.

All whiteboarding sessions done on the board are also automatically saved to the cloud, enabling you to access them through your Webex Teams app whenever you wish.

Webex Teams does not just feature one-to-one conversations. As the name would imply, Webex Teams is designed to be the optimal platform for managing teamwork and group tasks. The rooms feature allows you to have anything between three users up to thousands collaborating in the same conversation.

This function is great because it keeps everyone on the same page without having to call a meeting regularly which can dramatically slow productivity. Anyone can reach anyone at any time! The rooms also feature a search function which means you can quickly and accurately find any information that might have been discussed previously in the chat.

The ability to file share in Webex Teams is another feature that you’ll love. The Webex Teams client allows you to rapidly upload and download files up to the size of 2GB. This has been great for efficiency as the ability to instantly drag and drop required documents into a chat is considerably faster than attaching them to an email or sending them via Dropbox.

Unlike many professional instant messaging platforms, Webex Teams features extremely high-quality video calling functionality. If messaging isn’t quite enough to accurately get your point across then you may need to give your colleague a quick call to discuss your opinions. However, there’s no need to pick up that desk phone. By the press of a button, you can instantly call that person in full high definition video and continue the conversation in Webex Teams.

These last two features have both been announced but haven’t technically been released yet. However, they’re so exciting it would have been a shame not to include them.

At Cisco Live Melbourne 2018, we got our first look at the Webex Teams AI Voice assistant (Webex Teams was still named Cisco Spark at this time).

Cisco designed this voice assistant in order to meet professional needs and perform business-oriented tasks. This is unique because all existing voice assistants, such as Cortana, Alexa, and Siri, were designed for the consumer domain; a work-based toolset is a brand new concept to the voice assistant market.

The second feature that is due to be released soon is augmented reality. Augmented reality is technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, providing a composite view. Cisco has taken this technology and realised how useful it could be for presenting products in a video meeting.

The ability to fully visualise a product or packaging in a 3D way is a modern feat in technology and the fact we are now able to do it through our smartphone is extremely exciting. There are countless industries that could benefit from this kind of technology and the sooner its released for us to make use of, the better.